Status anxiety
Will Keir Starmer get me banned from football games?
Last Saturday, I made the 400-mile round trip to Burnley with my 16-year-old son Charlie to see Queens Park Rangers…
A British First Amendment wouldn’t save free speech
Does the United Kingdom need a First Amendment? That’s a question I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, given the…
Starmer’s snowflakes’ charter
I almost choked on my cornflakes when I read that the Prime Minister had said he would slash red tape…
Yvette Cooper wants to lock up your sons
In his independent review of the Prevent programme last year, Sir William Shawcross warned that something had gone very wrong…
Did Michael Gove mean what he said?
I thought the Spectator dinner for Michael Gove hosted by Fraser Nelson would be cancelled. To be clear, this wasn’t…
Why play the Saudi anthem before an all-British boxing match?
For only the second time in my life, I went to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last weekend. At least,…
The science of voting for Kamala Harris
The latest issue of Scientific American, a popular science monthly published by Springer Nature, contains an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris.…
Help! I’ve got class envy
The summer holidays were a washout as far as my children are concerned, because we had to cancel our trip…
Labour’s backwards steps on free speech
Free speech advocates like me need to stop talking about the meagre gains we made under the last government because…
How to exploit a crisis
The phrase ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’ is often attributed to Winston Churchill, but it’s something the…
I was wrong about staycations
I hadn’t intended to go on a ‘staycation’ this summer. Quite the contrary, I’d booked a family holiday to Norway.…
Will Starmer make the Online Safety Act even worse?
Good God, there’s a lot of guff being talked about the Online Safety Act. This was a piece of legislation…
Free speech stops riots
With depressing predictability, the riots have led to calls for more censorship. Historically, it was the authoritarian right who blamed…
Welcome to the new global theocracy
I had a revelation while watching the Olympics opening ceremony. It was during the infamous section that I (and almost…
The intersectional feminist rewriting the national curriculum
The appointment of Becky Francis CBE to lead the Department for Education’s shake-up of the national curriculum is typical of…
Are the Rees-Moggs ready for their new reality?
I felt slightly anxious for Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg when I read he’d agreed to have a reality show made about…
What Labour could learn from Australia and New Zealand
I’m just coming to the end of a four-week speaking tour Down Under and have spotted some worrying signs of…
The funny side of being cancelled
Douglas Is Cancelled, the new drama series on ITV, should come with a trigger warning – for me, anyway. Watching…
The joy of my new allotment
I was pleasantly surprised when I got an email from the Acton Gardening Association last October telling me that a…
New Zealand’s culture wars backlash
I’m in New Zealand on a speaking tour organised by the Kiwi Free Speech Union, and in some ways it’s…
Why an ex-Spectator editor told me to back Reform
When I told an ex-editor of this magazine that I was planning to write about why I’m voting for Reform…
The Tories have failed us over debanking – again
On Saturday morning, when I was helping Caroline prepare for a lunch party, I got an urgent request for help…
Labour’s plans to rewrite the National Curriculum
Michael Gove’s decision to stand down in this election was a reminder that the one really bright spot in the…
The real reason Ofcom has gone after GB News
I don’t envy the people who run Ofcom. On the one hand, they’re under enormous political pressure to sanction GB…
Confessions of a catnapper
As Christopher Snowdon recently pointed out, the past few governments have had a habit of passing laws that are either…
